


Clockwork Sorrows

by silverstardust



Series: Secrets of Beforus [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Clocks, Descendants - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Karkat's Journal, LITERALLY, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Revolution, Prophecy, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, doomsday clock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 09:50:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15992729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverstardust/pseuds/silverstardust
Summary: (This one is purposefully short.)-------You are Sollux Captor, the Archtech, and it is time for you to follow your moirail into death.





	Clockwork Sorrows

You construct the clock by hand, piece by piece. You do not use your psii, your programming, or your robots. It’d be an insult to him if you did. Besides. It’s more meaningful if you do it by hand. Stands out more. Makes a bigger statement. A psii user using his bare hands to create a monument, instead of his psii? No one’s done that before. (If someone has, you’ll eat your hands.)

 

The clock is about fifteen feet tall, twice the size of the Empress. It’s all made of polished dark oak, cut from the grove the Lost Children are hidden in. It’s nearby, too, just an hour’s walk away. Every day you leave the village and head to wear you’re building the clock. You work all day, then head home again after dark. You’re not in charge of the Lost Children anymore- you gave your position of leadership to the few Jades remaining of what was your revolutionary army. (His revolutionary army.) They take care of the children, and none of them will grow up soft, like he feared. They will learn to fight, how to survive. And hopefully, all twelve of them will come from this village, and everything he foresaw won’t come to pass.

 

That’d be nice. Ideal. Probably isn’t gonna happen, but there’s no point in not having hope. Even if your chances are so slim. ...You don’t want to think about numbers. Back to the clock.

 

The mechanics of it isn’t tricky at all. You’re good with gears. With wires. You can do this part one handed, while blindfolded. It’s too easy. The brass and silver shines magnificently. You polished it until you ran out of grease, and then got more and polished it even more. You could use it like a mirror.

 

The clock face is what you take the most time with. You consult his journal’s words, it’s sketchings, every single time you move the brush. You want it as accurate as possible. Once you’re finished, you’ll hide this book in a place you hope his descendant will find. (He deserves to know his heritage. Even if the Empress tries to hide away everything from the light of night.)

 

In total, there’s thirty two of them. Thirty two characters painted into the face of the clock, in four rings that all move independently of each other- after all, this clock does not count the hours of the day. It counts down the seconds, minutes, days, sweeps to The Reckoning. At this point, it’s only inevitable now. (It might have always been inevitable, but you hate to think that he might not have ever had a chance at winning and changing fate. It’s depressing.)

 

The clock will move on its own. It will never be interfered with. It has its own soul. And one day, it will line up. And that’s when The Reckoning will come to pass.

 

(Or will the clock cause the Reckoning? Who knows. You don’t.)

 

The first set of four you paint on the middlemost part. They’re peculiar looking creatures- “humans”, he would say. They look like the gods your ancient ancestors used to worship- The Princes and Mistresses of the Seasons, who were murdered by their own Guardians. (You try not to think about that either. It’s a morbid story that you doubt is true.) You don’t know why these four godly characters have any significance to do with his warnings, but they’re in his book, so you paint them on anyways, as identical to the sketches in his book as you can.

 

The next set of four are also “humans”. Some look a little similar to the ones you’ve already painted, but you see subtle differences in them, so you paint them in and hope that you didn’t screw up fantastically. These ones look a little less like the four godly characters you drew before, and a little more like the four Divine Beasts, had they been human. (You definitely don’t like this comparison either.) You notice that of the humans that look similar, they always share a color. The two boys have red and orange, the two girls pink and lavender. The first boy-girl pair have two shades of blue, and the other boy-girl pair has two shades of green. Perhaps humans have different blood colors too, and that’s what blood colors they possess? Their irises were colored such a way, but you’re not sure.

 

The next set is a set of twelve- your first set of twelve. You understand that these twelve are supposed to be your descendants, and really, it’s unfair of you not to give them all equal attention, but you make sure you pay extra attention to the details of your own descendant. It’s not often a troll gets a glimpse of what his descendant will look like, not with your lifespan and blood caste. You really wish you could be able to meet him in the future, but you know this will not happen. So you paint his mopey mess of hair with great detail, and go slow when you paint the sign on his jumpsuit.

 

Nepeta’s descendent looks like her, but calmer and with longer hair. Kanaya’s descendant looks just like her too, although the tattoos are something new. Terezi’s descendant looks a little more wild, in a jumpsuit of her own and long hair. You’re indifferent about the cerulean, indigo, and purple descendants (although the purple one gives you some heavy satanic cult vibes). The Grand Advisor’s descendant and the Empress’s descendant look like they seriously rebelled against their ancestors. (Good for them.) There’s a rust descendant from someone you definitely don’t know, and Tavros’s descendant, who seems to have wings. And his descendant- his descendant is a spitting image of him. The same untameable hair, a red sweater that looks identical to the one he used to wear as part of his Threshecutioner uniform. It makes you smile to paint him. Nostalgic.

 

The last set, another set of twelve trolls, seems more familiar to you. They share the same hues and blood colors are the last set you painted, although these set of twelve… Look more like you all. Like you, when you were younger, and when he was younger, and Nepeta, and the Empress and everyone else.

 

You start to wonder if all of them are ancestor-dancestor pairs.

 

You paint them all asleep. Eyes closed, arms crossed over their chests. It makes them seem a little more lifelike. Like the wood is just a panel of glass, like you could reach through and shake them awake.

 

(You painted them like this because you could not bare the dead, painted eyes of your moirail staring down at you from the clock.)

 

When you’ve finished the painting, you carefully insert the rings into the face of the clock, slide back down, and step back.

 

At first, for a minute, the clock does nothing.

 

And then, the whole

 

world

 

_breathes._

 

The ticking begins, and the pendulum inside the glass in the clock, ever so slowly, begins to tilt in the gold, painted inside. You hold your breath as the world continues to breathe around you.

 

_Tick_

 

The pendulum pauses within the gold.

 

_Tock_

 

It falls, towards the middle again, but keeps going, and swings into the purple backdrop. Rises once again, and falls back to the gold.

 

_Heroic_

 

You release your held breath into the silent, alive woods around you. The pendulum falls back into the purple. The ringlets of trolls and humans began to move together all at once.

 

_Just_

 

The innermost ring, the first four humans, and the first twelve trolls, both begin to rotate to the right, at differing speeds. The pendulum swings back to gold.

 

_Prospit_

 

The other rings of humans and trolls begin to rotate left, in the opposite directions as the other rings. All four rings move together, but at their own speeds, independent of each other. The pendulum swings back to purple.

 

_Derse_

 

You stop counting, and the clock continues to move on by itself. It’s independent of everything around it. No matter what happens to the woods around it, it will last. Your lamp post in the woods. Nothing will ever stop it from ticking, from counting, and it will forever continue counting the seconds, days, sweeps, to the Reckoning.

 

This is your final tribute to him. Your final tribute to your moirail, long passed from this world. You have spent all of your life, after your revolution, trying to make this clock. And you’ve succeeded. This is your final legacy- the final tribute to The Chimeric, Karkat Vantas.

 

You are Sollux Captor, the Archtech, and it is time for you to follow your moirail into death.


End file.
